Robotics & Automation

Houston Mechatronics Inc. (HMI), has announced a Series B investment of $20 million from Transocean and existing investor Schlumberger, which led HMI’s Series A investment in 2015.

Much of the new funding will be directed towards the commercialization of HMI’s first product, Aquanaut, a sub-sea service robot that can perform complex tasks over low bandwidth networks, eliminating the need for surface ships.

Beyond Aquanaut, HMI intends to continue developing novel sub-sea capability and other robotic technology for use in oil and gas applications with an objective to increase reliability, efficiency, capability, and safety.

The global Industrial Robotics Industry was estimated at $25.68 billion in 2013 and is expected to reach $40 billion by 2020, according to market research by Million Insights.

The desire to reduce operational costs by many manufacturing companies is expected to drive the global market growth, which can be majorly attributed to the adoption of automation through robotics.

Average labor costs in China have been rising by nearly 10 per cent yearly. The use of robots in industries has helped to reduced workers idle time by 80 per cent and save more than 50 per cent of the production cost, leading to significant cost savings.

Robotics and supply chain automation company GreyOrange will unveil its expanded range of Butler robots capable of managing a variety of payloads from 100 to 1600 kgs (220 to 3500 lbs) at LogiMat 2018 in Germany.

The goods-to-person Butler™ system lets warehouses run high-speed operations by automating inventory storage (putaway) and order fulfilment. It has been deployed in distribution centers in Japan, Hong Kong, India, Europe and the Americas for industries such as 3PL, e-commerce and retail.

According to the Association for Advancing Automation’s (A3) annual report on automation and robotics market statistics, 2017 was a milestone year for the North American robotics market.

It surpassed previous high water marks in all four statistical categories: order units, order revenue, shipment units, and shipment revenue. The amount of robots sold in North America last year also surpassed all previous records.

Customers purchased 34,904 total units representing $1.896 billion in total sales. These numbers show growth of 0.9% in units and 0.1% in dollars from 2016.

With plug-and-play integration on all models of Universal Robots, the Robotiq FT 300 performs highly repeatable, precision force control tasks such as finishing, product testing, assembly and precise part insertion. It has a measuring range of ±300N.

New tax rules introduced by the US government would allow companies to immediately deduct all of the costs of investing in robotics and automation equipment, according to a report on Wall Street Journal.

In fact, the tax break could extend to other types of equipment as well.

Epson Robots will be showcasing its robotics solutions for a wide variety of applications in factory automation at the Automation Technology show, ATX West.

The showcase will feature the new T3 All-in-One SCARA robot, the Flexion™ N2 6-Axis robot as well other high-precision robots for small parts assembly in industries ranging from automotive and medical development, to lab automation, consumer electronics, electronic components and industrial.

Epson will also lead a discussion on how to get started on automation.

The ongoing demand for an increase in the minimum wage to the level which would enable workers to buy burgers is leading fast-food giants to consider fully automating hundreds if not tens of thousands of restaurants across the US, getting rid of all the human employees.

The latest senior executive to suggest such a move is Leonard Comma, CEO of fast-food chain Jack in the Box.